Google has officially signed up to sponsor the OpenStack Foundation, the first of the big three – Google, Microsoft and AWS – to formally throw its weight behind the open source cloud orchestration software. Analysts believe the move will improve support for Linux containers across public and private cloud environments.

Virtualisation specialist Citrix has announced it is officially joining the OpenStack Foundation as a corporate sponsor, the open source organisation it left four years ago in order to pursue the rival Cloud Stack initiative.

There are two sides to the cloud coin: one positive, the other negative, and too many people focus on one at the expense of the other for a variety of reasons ranging from ignorance to wilful misdirection. But ultimately, success resides in embracing both sides and pulling together the capabilities of both enterprises and their suppliers to make the most of the positive and limit the negative.